The prevalence of usage tracking in computing devices continues to increase. For example, a browser may be configured to store cookies to track user navigation within a website and even between websites, which may be used to supply personalized ads. Other applications have also incorporated usage tracking, such as to “check in” for a social network application, track purchases made, recently accessed documents, maintain a list of geographic locations visited, get directions, and so forth. Thus, usage tracking may be used to support a variety of additional functionality that is made available to a user.
In some instances, however, this usage tracking is not desired. A user shopping for a birthday present, for example, may have information related to the search continue even after the search, e.g., as ads, recently accessed webpages used to make a greeting card, location tracking from physically visiting a store, and so forth. Conventional techniques that are made available to stop this tracking require the user to manually interact with each application performing the tracking individually, manually turn-off a GPS antenna, and so forth. Thus, this could be frustrating to a user even in instances in which the user is aware of the tracking and especially frustrating in instances in which the user is not aware, such as for a specific application.